Linux Networking: Exploring Samba - page 5

The Samba Essentials

July 10, 2000

By
William Wong

Samba can operate without any security or it can utilize any of a variety of
security mechanisms integrated with Linux and Windows. This section
presents the major options, but does not delve into all the details, as this is
beyond the scope of this article. In general, a home or small business network
may operate without any security. Security can be added later if necessary.

There are different ways to secure access to Samba resources. The first is
with no security, so anyone can access resources. The second is to use account
names. The third is to use names and passwords. In addition, the names and
passwords can be maintained by Samba, Samba can use Linux names and passwords,
or names and passwords from a Windows NT domain controller. It can also act as a Windows NT domain controller.

Resources can be managed at the user, share, server, or domain level. For
small networks, the share level is often sufficient. In this case the shares
have their own access passwords. User level management tends to be the easiest
to manage.

What Else?
There are many other features within Samba not covered in this
article. For example, the NETLOGON support allows scripts to be executed on
clients when they log onto the server to access resources. This is a necessary
feature for larger networks, but it is often unused on smaller ones.